PLT | Chapter 24

River Wind and Fishing Fires

Once the audience had completely cleared out, the enormous theater instantly became empty and hollow. Even speaking carried an echo.

Guan Chenfeng and Jiang Chenchi had already taken off their changshan and changed back into regular clothes. They greeted them with utmost respect, “Hello, shige. Hello, Xiao Yan-laoshi.”

Seeing how suddenly well-behaved they looked, Yan Chao could not help freezing for a moment. Weren’t they having a great time using him for zagua onstage just now? Why were they suddenly acting so polite now?

Yan Chao waved a hand. “No need, no need. I’m not that many years older than you, just call me ge.”

Zhou Chenyu said with a laugh, “In xiangsheng, there’s no seniority onstage. The two of them only used you for zagua because they saw I’m close with you, so don’t take it to heart.”

Yan Chao shot him a glance. “Am I that close with you?”

Seeing the two young performers beside him reveal nervous, apprehensive expressions, Yan Chao quickly turned to them and said gently, “It’s fine. I didn’t take it to heart.”

Zhou Chenyu replied, “Mm, your shisao is throwing a tantrum at me.”

Yan Chao turned to look at him. “Do you believe I’ll start smashing up the theater right now?”

Zhou Chenyu cautiously lifted his eyes to glance at him. “Let’s not, alright? If it makes the trending searches tomorrow, ‘Yan Chao Commits Domestic Violence,’ that wouldn’t look too good.”

Yan Chao: “…”

Before he could say anything, the late-night snack Zhou Chenyu and the others had ordered arrived. Guan Chenfeng came in from the door carrying a huge takeout bucket. He set it on the table and opened it, revealing all kinds of grilled skewers packed densely inside.

Yan Chao suddenly remembered Zhou Chenyu saying during the recording that they ate late-night snacks after every performance. So this was what they were eating. He could not help feeling that it was hard to watch. “You eat like this every day?”

Zhou Chenyu nodded. “What else?”

Yan Chao shook his head helplessly. “Once in a while is one thing, but in the long run this is way too unhealthy.”

Jiang Chenchi chimed in, “I’ve been saying that forever, but they just won’t listen.”

Zhou Chenyu sighed. “As expected, great minds think alike.”

Since it had come up, Yan Chao grew a little curious and asked Jiang Chenchi, “Right, I heard from your shige that you’re at Peking University too?”

Jiang Chenchi was steady and poised onstage, but offstage his smile was rather shy. Nodding politely, he said, “I’m in the Chinese department.”

Zhou Chenyu came nosing in curiously too. “Hey, at your school, your Xiao Yan-xuezhang is pretty famous, right?”

Jiang Chenchi nodded. “Of course. Especially in our School of Literature and our School of Journalism and Communication, everyone treats Xiao Yan-laoshi as a model.”

At that, Zhou Chenyu smiled, proud as if he were the Peking University role model himself.

Yan Chao glanced at that smug look on his face and, for a moment, could not be bothered with him. He continued asking Jiang Chenchi, “You haven’t graduated yet, right? What year are you in?”

Jiang Chenchi answered, “Third year. I don’t have many classes anymore, so I’m free every evening.”

Yan Chao could not help being curious. “You’re a university student, so how did you end up getting into xiangsheng?”

Zhou Chenyu explained, “The Jiang Lili I introduced you to before is his older sister. You could say he more or less grew up in our Xiaqing Yuan. Surrounded by it from childhood, he naturally fell in love with xiangsheng.”

Yan Chao smiled. “I really didn’t expect that. Turns out you did help water a future towering tree a little, so you’re not completely useless after all.”

Zhou Chenyu said, “See that? Who says xiangsheng performers are all uncultured? This is a genuine top student cultivated right out of our little theater.”

Guan Chenfeng glanced at him and muttered quietly, “Yeah, and it’s not like you sat the gaokao with him. He went through sacks and sacks of practice papers alone.”

Zhou Chenyu looked at Yan Chao with interest. “I thought all it took to get into Peking University was a good brain. So you people really do measure practice papers by the sack.”

But Yan Chao was still caught on what Guan Chenfeng had just said. “You even accompanied him through the gaokao?”

Guan Chenfeng nodded proudly. “Of course. By then I’d already dropped out, so I devoted myself wholeheartedly to keeping him company while he studied.”

Yan Chao could not help laughing, and then Zhou Chenyu said, “These two have been dazi ever since they were kids, and they’ve never changed partners. You could say they have a childhood-sweethearts kind of bond.”

Jiang Chenchi cautiously reminded him, “Shige, ‘childhood sweethearts’ describes a boy and a girl.”

Guan Chenfeng jumped in, “Then boyhood sweethearts.”

Watching the two of them, Yan Chao could not suppress a laugh, but inwardly he could not help sighing over the bond between them.

Then he suddenly remembered something else and asked, “I heard that in your Liao Feng Pavilion there’s an ancestral rule saying only proper ertu can be given a generation name. So how did the two of you get one too?”

Guan Chenfeng said, “That’s all thanks to our shige.”

Jiang Chenchi explained, “Strictly speaking, we were only apprentices, not ertu, so according to the rules we weren’t supposed to get one. But back then shige pleaded with shifu for a long time, and shifu was also an especially kind person, so he finally agreed to give us generation names.”

Yan Chao asked, “Then your shiye, and the people in Dong Yuan, were they willing to agree?”

The two of them exchanged a glance, then looked at Zhou Chenyu. No one said anything, but the meaning was already obvious.

Yan Chao had already more or less guessed that Zhou Chenyu had definitely gone through quite a struggle with them over the matter of giving names.

He could not help drifting off in thought again. Zhou Chenyu really was a very strange person. At first glance, all one felt was that he was careless and unserious, with no proper shape to him at all. But the closer you got to him, the more you discovered that beneath that beautiful outer shell, he was not rotten wadding on the inside after all.

At that moment, though, Zhou Chenyu unusually did not boast or brag, and instead waved a hand. “That’s enough. Save all the songs of praise for when I’m not around.”

Yan Chao laughed at him inwardly. So this guy could get embarrassed too.

As he spoke, Zhou Chenyu put away that laughing, joking expression and looked at the two young performers. Rarely serious, he said, “I watched the whole show today. Overall, it was good. You’ve improved a lot.”

The moment they heard that line, the two of them knew shige was about to talk business. They immediately sat properly, backs straight.

Zhou Chenyu continued, “The problem is still the same old problem. The second the audience starts chiming in from below, you lose control of the stage.”

“Right now you’re still only in a small theater, but next month we’re opening a special show. At that point there’ll be thousands of audience members sitting below the stage, and quite a lot of them will definitely be there for you. In a venue with several thousand people, are you still going to let the audience lead you around by the nose? What kind of look is that?”

The two of them pressed their lips together and stopped talking.

Zhou Chenyu glanced at Guan Chenfeng. “Being good at picking up audience lines and easily producing brilliant xiangua, that’s a good thing. Appropriate interaction is as it should be, but you can’t always be affected by the audience and let them lead you around by the nose. If that happens, are you the one performing xiangsheng for them?”

Then he said to Jiang Chenchi, “You’re older than him, and your penggen is steadier. The two of you work together, and your level of tacit understanding is beyond criticism. But once you’re onstage, you have to remember at every moment your identity as the one who liang huo. Help him keep hold of the rhythm. The dougen likes to let himself fly free, and that means the penggen has to yank him back in time. Don’t indulge him in everything.”

Zhou Chenyu paused, then added, “Right, and then there’s the matter of pao huo.”

Pao huo means exposing a xiangsheng routine’s suspense or punchline ahead of time, which greatly reduces the effect of the performance.

There are always a few audience members who do not understand the rules, thinking that just because they bought a ticket and entered the venue, they’re suddenly the boss. They casually pick up the thread from below and snatch the performers’ lines onstage, which is truly hateful.

Zhou Chenyu said, “I know that right now there are a lot of young girls in the audience, and you feel embarrassed to really be harsh. But rules are rules. This can’t be乱.”

Back when He Chenfeng and Zhou Chenyu had just started attracting a huge wave of new fans, they had run into quite a lot of this sort of problem too.

Zhou Chenyu had a very forceful stage presence, and every time he would snap back at anyone who pao huo on the spot. Even though he used a joking tone, being collectively teased by the rest of the audience did not feel good either. Over time, the audience all learned the rules, and nowadays there was hardly any pao huo anymore.

“The way xiangsheng performers and the audience get along with each other is also something that has to be explored slowly and cultivated slowly.” Once Zhou Chenyu finished talking about the serious matters, his tone instantly softened a great deal. He raised a brow at Jiang Chenchi. “Bring out that same kind of boldness you had when you snapped at someone today, hm?”

At the sudden mention of that, Jiang Chenchi seemed to remember the unexpected situation onstage today and looked a little embarrassed. “At the time I really did lose my temper a little. It was also the first time we’d run into something like that. Before, I always thought Guan Chenfeng was still so young… I just didn’t expect audiences nowadays not even to let minors off.”

Yan Chao had still been so stunned by Zhou Chenyu’s big-shige manner just now that he had been unable to speak. Only now did he finally get a word in. “Girls these days really are bold. They actually dare hand over something like that in front of hundreds of people.”

Guan Chenfeng muttered, “Handing over that kind of thing isn’t the scary part. The scary part is that there are actually people who really dare accept it…”

Before he had even finished speaking, Zhou Chenyu’s expression darkened. Guan Chenfeng got so frightened that he immediately shut up.

Zhou Chenyu said, “Don’t discuss other people’s faults behind their backs. How did shifu teach you?”

Guan Chenfeng pouted. “I know I was wrong.”

But from their tone and expressions, Yan Chao had already inferred that this matter had most likely happened in Dongning Yuan again.

Even though Zhou Chenyu did not get along with Dongning Yuan, he still would not let his shidis gossip even about their ugly scandals. In his bones, he really was a proper gentleman.

After scolding Guan Chenfeng, Zhou Chenyu probably felt he could not quite bear it either, so he ruffled his head once more. “You little brat, the two of you had better do xiangsheng properly and win some pride for our Xia Yuan, got it?”

Footnotes:

[1] “Zagua” 砸挂, a xiangsheng practice of teasing, ribbing, or making someone the target of a joke, usually someone close enough that the teasing reads as affectionate or performative rather than malicious.

[2] “Penggen” 捧哏, the supporting role in xiangsheng who feeds lines, responds, frames jokes, and helps control pacing and structure.

[3] “Dougen” 逗哏, the lead comic role in xiangsheng who usually drives the punchlines, exaggeration, and verbal comedy.

[4] “Dazi” 搭子, meaning a regular partner or pairing. Here it refers to the two of them having long performed together as a stable duo.

[5] “Ertu” 儿徒, meaning a disciple raised in the master’s household from a young age, learning the craft while living as part of the household rather than simply studying formally.

[6] “Generation name” 给字儿 here. In this context, it means being granted a formal name element within the master-disciple lineage, something tied to status and recognition within the tradition.

[7] “Xiangua” 现挂, meaning improvised material created on the spot from the live situation, audience reactions, current context, or unexpected developments during the performance.

[8] “Liang huo” 量活儿, the penggen’s task of measuring, holding, and managing the routine, especially its pace, spacing, and flow, so the dougen does not drift too far off or lose control of the structure.

[9] “Pao huo” 刨活儿, meaning revealing a punchline, suspense point, or setup too early, whether by an audience member or a performer, and thereby damaging the effect of the routine.

[10] boyhood sweetheart (竹马竹马): adapted from the phrase 青梅竹马, literally “green plums and bamboo horse,” which describes a boy and girl who grew up together as childhood sweethearts. Here the speaker jokingly swaps out the “green plums” part and says “bamboo horse and bamboo horse” to make it male-male, meaning two boys who grew up together with the same close childhood bond.